A man was talking to a group of his mates round a table. They were the ones bent double with laughter. The rest of the people in the room, ten or twelve of them, couldn’t help but hear what he was saying and they too were snorting and crying. He wasn’t saying particularly funny things. He was just chuntering about his mates, their wives, who was due to get the next drink.

At first we thought it was somebody doing a brilliant impression of Peter Cook. Then we realised it was Peter Cook.

I wish I’d taped it, or just written down some of what he’d said. But I didn’t. I just laughed and soon forgot the details. I’ve since realised that this is often the case with great comedy: style is more important than content.

I’ve always loved Peter Cook. I saw the great TV shows with Dudley Moore when they were first broadcast. I saw all the TV he did up to his death in 1995, including the tour de force on the Clive James show, when he played four different characters. I read all the books. I bought all the Derek and Clive albums. I judged people by how they reacted to those. Really.

The latest production from the team (group ? gang ?) who ran the Peter Cook Appreciation Society is ‘How Very Interesting’. It is a collection of interviews, mostly conducted by Paul Hamilton, with people who knew Cook during his life and career. For anyone who loves his humour, or agrees with Robyn Hitchcock, quoted here, that “he and The Beatles were the biggest single modifiers of the British class system,” this book is a must-have.

Revelations leap from almost every page.

Early on in his TV career, as Dick Clement says, shows were broadcast with hardly any interference from management. Can you imagine that happening today? Cook would have only a general idea of the script, if there was one, and flew by the seat of his pants. He got away with it, everyone agrees, because he was a genius. Alan Bennett said: “It takes me a week to produce one joke which I unfold in my hands like a butterfly. You sit down with Peter and twenty come out in the first minute.”

What I found consistently cheering about this book was that it emphasised the hard work and professionalism which Cook brought to all his enterprises. We’ve become used to thinking of him as a tragic drunk who let everyone down and wasted his talent in mewling self-indulgence. But you’ve only to look at the sheer volume and quality of work produced to see that couldn’t be the whole story.

Cook was an authentic great artist. In common with all great artists, his gift was to be able to see the world in a particular, original way and to transmit this vision into the imagination of others. To him the world was both tragic and absurd. This book, and the others produced by the same people since his death, will help to ensure that Cook’s status as a towering figure in twentieth century culture will remain secure.